Air Fryer Chicken Taquitos (Gluten-Free, Dairy-Free)

The taquito is a small, honest piece of Mexican home cooking: leftover meat, a corn tortilla rolled tight, and hot oil. Sold from market stalls and antojito carts — the word literally means "little cravings" — they go by flautas in much of the country when they're made long and thin. Either way the idea is the same. You take something humble, you roll it up, and you fry it until it crackles.

Here's the honest tradeoff with the air fryer: a deep fry gives you that uniform, blistered, all-over crunch and a faintly oil-slicked shell that's hard to fully replicate. What you get instead is a genuinely crisp taquito with a fraction of the oil, no pot of bubbling fat to babysit, and a filling that stays juicy. Brush them well — dry tortillas in moving air go brittle in the wrong way, more cracker than crunch. And because corn tortillas are naturally gluten-free and there's no cheese in the roll, this lands clean for anyone cooking around wheat or dairy.

Spring for a basket roomy enough to lay them out without touching — crowded taquitos steam each other soft instead of crisping.